Violent Exclusions: Locating Performances of Absent Bodies in International Law

In response to UNESCO’s 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage and increased global access to subaquatic shipwreck sites by means of innovative deep-sea technologies, this thesis seeks to explore the shortcomings and implications of body regulation in international waters. By foregrounding historical colonial regulations of bodies across the middle passage, I survey contemporary changes in international oceanic laws and maritime archaeological practices used to evaluate wreck sites. Guided by scholars like Sarah Dromgoole, Timothy Darvill, Laurajane Smith, Craig Forrest, and Jean-Luc Nancy, I examine performative discourses around systems of valuing bodies and colonial narratives of commodification that these systems perpetuate. In an attempt to seek out counter-narratives, examining Chiharu Shiota’s work The Key in the Hand, Nick Cave’s “Sea Sick,” and the One Million Bones Project, provides insight into ways of dismantling the present-absent dichotomy perpetuated by protectionist initiatives like those of the 2001 UNESCO Convention.